


use your powers for good

by Maple_Fay



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, M/M, Post-Endgame, Tags limited to avoid spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 12:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maple_Fay/pseuds/Maple_Fay
Summary: "We won!" / "We're going to be okay."





	use your powers for good

**Author's Note:**

> So this is basically me trying to work through my post-Endgame feelings, and work my guilty pleasure ship into a fix-it scenario requested by at least one of my friends. Hopefully it works, for me AND for you, Gentle Reader. Enjoy!
> 
> (TItle from "Invincible" by OK Go, a song I found heavily in Tony Stark fanmixes, and rightly so.)

“We’re going to be okay.” Pepper swallows around the bile rising in her throat. "You can re—“

An orange circle of light opens in the ground and Tony falls through it, landing on a—hospital bed, surrounded by people in scrubs and surgical masks?!

“This is all very touching, Mrs. Stark,” a cool, steady voice rumbles behind her, and a tall, tired-looking man wrapped in a dusty cloak steps right into said opening, nodding at her respectfully, “but we’ll take it from here now. Peter knows all the details. Christine, is everything...?”

The opening closes, and Pepper exhales rapidly, her heart speeding at a clearly unnatural rate. What—how—who—?!”

“Oh, hey, Miss Po—Mrs. Stark,” Peter chimes in, speaking rather more quickly and shakily than she remembers him do, “that’s Doctor Strange, ma’am, the Time Stone Keeper—and that lady there is Doctor Palmer, his... friend? Girlfriend? Can’t say, really, but she’s a surgeon, and she’s _very_ good, and Doctor Strange felt really bad, you know, about the whole ‘one and only scenario’ thing? And so he figured, why not? Thanos never played by any rules, so why should we? You know?”

Pepper stares at him, gaping, and not understanding a _word_ of this impromptu speech.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter, because if there’s even a _sliver_ of a chance that Tony might make it, she'll take it.

Three thousand times over.

\--

“Explain this to me again, please.”

Peter nods enthusiastically from his place on the floor by her chair: he’s sitting cross-legged with a sketchbook in his lap, drawing fractals for Morgan, who’s _eating him up_ with her eyes, absolutely mesmerized. "So, we were on this planet, and we fought Thanos, right? But we lost, Mrs. Stark, we lost a _lot_ —and Doctor Strange knew we had to do it, you see, because this was the only way we could win—but he really didn’t _want_ it to be, he told me when we… came back, right? So he set up this whole thing with Doctor Palmer, figuring that with her wicked skills and his ability to manipulate time they could—“

Pepper puts an arm around his shoulders and hugs, tightly, hiding her face in the boy’s—young man’s—neck. “Thank you,” she whispers, and takes her first deep breath in hours. “ _Thank you_."

“Are you okay, Mommy?”

She blinks back tears and smiles at Morgan, leaning against her knees with a quizzical look on her face. “I’m great, baby girl. Are you having fun?”

“Look,” she replies, showing her one of Peter’s drawings, the one with Iron Man’s mask emerging from the fractal patterns, “Peter drew Daddy! Can we keep him? Can he be my brother?”

She feels Peter’s breath hitch, and flattens a palm over his heart. “Well, sweetheart, Peter’s got his own family—but yeah,” she feels the boy’s lungs expand as he sighs, his happiness pulling the corners of her mouth further upwards, “he sure can.”

\--

Everything is made of harsh, white light, and _hurts_ like a son of a bitch: especially his right hand. He groans, furrows his brow, tries to move his fingers…

“Easy, Tony, don’t move. I know the feeling, but you need to stay still for me, okay?”

He licks his lips, finds them parched and cracked—but then there’s an ice cube pressing gently against them, the moisture a welcome relief as much as a surprise. “Strange,” he croaks, opening his eyes a crack, “what have you—“

“One chance,” the sorcerer says, holding his left hand in a vice-tight grasp. He’s wearing what looks like _last year’s clothes_ , and appears to be as tired as Tony feels, which is saying something. “It was all we needed. You saved us, Tony. And I had to try. Had to see if I could save _you_.”

There’s a pause, and then Strange leans down, brushing his lips against Tony’s skin in the gentlest of caresses. Tony’s eyes open wider, some hospital machine beeping noisily as his heart speeds up. “Stephen, I—“

Strange releases his hand, and places it gently on the sheet covering Tony’s aching chest. “Don’t mention it. Really, don’t. Ever. Please.”

He expects the silence that follows to be awfully uncomfortable, but it’s quite the opposite: he feels at peace, exhausted, but satisfied, knowing that his mission has been fulfilled, that the world is _safe and whole and perfect_ , and his family is…

“Pepper?” he asks breathlessly, and Strange nods vigorously, his eyes snapping to the door. “Morgan?”

“And Peter,” the sorcerer confirms with an almost parental smile. “He did great. You should be proud. I’ll go and get them—they’ll be so happy to see you’re awake.”

“Stephen…”

Strange pauses with his back to the bed, turns just so that Tony can see the side of his face, a muscle in his cheek working as the man swallows heavily. “Thank you, Tony. For everything. For trusting me, most of all. And I’m sorry—also, it would seem, for everything.

“Rest, now. I’ll see you around.”

He exits the room, leaving Tony alone for a short moment—before the door opens again, and he is immersed in love and care and warmth that isn’t purely physical, and he thinks: he could get used to this.

Apparently, now he’s got the rest of his life to try.

He breathes, and smiles, and holds his family close.

**/end (?)**


End file.
